San Diego: return
San Diego: return
If you have difficulty in following my track on the SPOT page, so do I and I was there.
It took me a long time Monday morning to reconfigure GANNET’s cabin from dock to sailing mode. I have come to realize that her interior is a puzzle of interlocking parts that have to be arranged and rearranged in a specific order. I am getting better at that and at stowing certain objects that I need within arm’s reach of Command Central, as I call the aft-facing Sportaseat on the Great Cabin floor; and I find I need fewer movements performing daily tasks, such as making coffee in the morning or a gin an tonic in the evening; this last drunk, as, of course, is Laphroaig, out of a Dartington crystal double Old-Fashioned glass, not standard equipment on Moore 24s.
However when I cleared the pipe berths so that I could sleep on them that night and moved my clothes bags, a sail bag that now serves as a laundry bag, a never used Porta Potti--at dock I use shore facilities; what I do at sea is my own business--a life jacket, and various sail bags that hold sails, to the v-berth; and moved a sleeping bag and pillow from the bow to accompany my foul weather gear--unneeded--on the quarter berths, the puzzle was in disarray.
I raised the mainsail at the slip in order to reeve the leech reef lines--also unneeded--then lowered it and Torqeeded across the basin. Just before I left the slip, a sea lion flopped onto the side dock of the big empty slip outside of mine, and a white egret landed on the far side of my slip. I stayed long enough to chase the egret away. I don’t want messy birds, however elegant in appearance, to make GANNET their home.
As I passed the sea lion and sea bird covered bait barge, the smell was pronounced.
Just outside the basin I set the sails and raised the Torqeedo, proceeding to short tack out the channel between the breakwaters. The distance from my slip to the ocean is slightly more than a mile.
No other boats were on the water. It was a week day, but I found when I lived in San Diego before that boat use here mostly ends as it does in places with lesser climates at Labor Day.
I had a winch handle in place, but it was never needed.
Looking under the mainsail before one tack, I noticed a North Sails label on the jib and realized why it had gone up and down relatively easily: I’ve bent on the wrong sail. This is the recut experimental one. The new, extremely balky sail is in one of the bags on the v-berth. Oi!
I wasn’t about to try to rectify my error underway and won’t until my next return to GANNET.
About halfway out the channel I caught the tip of a finger on my left hand on the exposed end of a split ring. A minor injury, but copious blood. I was wearing old clothes and kept the finger mostly pressed to my Levis, sailing truly single handed until I got out in the ocean, set the tiller pilot and went below for a band aid.
A couple of miles beyond the breakwater, I went below to check the iPad iNavX chartplotting app and found that I had access to the Internet via the ATT data plan. I went to the SPOT tracking page and found no track. I had pressed the “Track” button at the dock, but the light is difficult to see--at least for me--in bright sunlight. So I went on deck and pressed it again, this time successfully.
From the sea Mission Beach looked just as it had when I sailed here forty years ago.
As the day continued, the wind veered and headed us, until at sunset we were converging with land near San Clemente with a line of dramatic purple mountains inland. At last light I tacked, then eased off to a close reach for more comfortable sleeping.
For the first hours of the night the half moon on an almost smooth ocean was lovely. Then the moon set and the wind died. GANNET’s boom bounced around, causing me to realize I haven’t devised a preventer yet.
Overall I slept rather well, waking many times, seeing the lights of a few other vessels, but none near. The new lee cloths worked well. At one time while awake I found myself thinking that leaving both pipe berths empty so I can move my weight to whichever is to windward is inefficient, and that it might be better to stow some other heavy objects, such as water jerry cans behind the lee cloth on the port pipe berth, whose space is compromised by spare lines tied to a tube near the overhead anyway, and just sleep on the starboard berth.
Around midnight, I came about and retraced my track for a couple of hours to delay our return to Mission Bay until after dawn, tacking back around 2 a.m. Dawn found us 34 miles northwest of the waypoint I’ve put in iNavX just off the Mission Bay jetties.
After breakfast, I set the asymmetrical with Facnor furling gear on the bow sprit for the first time. It all went perfectly, even if the wind was so light we were only making 4 knots on a broad reach. I gybed a couple of times just for practice. Once part of the asymmetrical passed aft of the furled jib. I was able to pull it back and learned that it will usually be necessary to pull the clew of the sail around with the sheet to gybe cleanly.
With the smaller headsail, our speed dropped and so did the wind, until, naturally, when I was all the way in Quivira Basin and approaching the slip. Even then it only increased to ten knots.
As I have noted before, GANNET is a leaf.
With the wind behind me, I cut the Torqeedo and under bare poles we were still making 1.8 knots. Far too fast. I gave the Torqeedo some reverse to slow us, but knew that a leaf carries no way, and when I turned the ultra-light sloop into her slip and the wind she would be stopped. She was. I had to give us a little forward on the Torqeedo before I could step on the dock.
A pleasant sail. Some lessons learned about sailing GANNET and living on her underway. And most of all, a return to the sea.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012